AMD issues STOP SHIP order on Barcelona

[Miwo]

ouch, bad bad news...
makes you wonder wtf went wrong. Too caught up with trying to make a true native quadcore perhaps?

Intel dropping prices further now = nail in the coffin.

[knightwolf654]

intel wont drop them to low, now they feel they have almost no competition they dont need to.
AMD is hit a speed bump hopefully it not as big as come believe.

[dinos22]

what happens to people that have already purchased them

[The_Beast]

intel wont drop them to low, now they feel they have almost no competition they dont need to.
AMD is hit a speed bump hopefully it not as big as come believe.

that is the main reason I'm rooting for AMD is so Intel has competition

[alucasa]

what happens to people that have already purchased them

I have not experienced any critical issues with my Bracelonas, but all they are doing is crunching (WCG) anyway, and the scores are not very impressive compared to core 2 duo.

[Zytek_Fan]

Hilbert @ Guru3D summed it up greatly

Man .. this is a really difficult conclusion. I feel that the Phenom really is an adequate enough processor, the problem is that Intel released it's core technology much sooner than AMD could release Barcelona/Phenom. The Phenom 9700 as tested today is competing relatively good with Intel's Q6600, yet that processor has been out for half a year already, yet AMD is fighting off bugs in it's CPU and mainboard platform. At this very moment, at the very least, the mainboards still have a number of bugs that need to be squashed, and this still has an effect on performance. For whatever reason, especially gaming, the Phenom seems to show performance issues.

No-matter how you look at it; the current Phenom processor however will be no match to Intel's Penryn based processors. Intel is just a good step ahead and that's a massive issue for AMD, they are a step behind.

The Phenom 9700 processor as tested today is an okay competing processor compared to the Q6600. But considering that's Intels upcoming "budget" level quad core processor, with a new 45nm die, the Q9300 (2.5 GHz) is scheduled for next month already, we can only conclude that it's barely enough.

But some perspective then; AMD reacted immediately at the launch by pricing the Phenom series really good. You can pickup the Phenom 9700 processor at the price of a Q6600 placing it precisely where it should be. The thing is though, Phenom was consistently behind in gaming performance and that's a big deal to me. Also, Intel's quad core processors overclock much much better. Yet another thing to consider.

So overall I'm not at all disappointed by AMD Phenom at all. It's just that we were all expecting a little more. We as consumers like it when two gigantic processor manufacturers have to battle for that number one spot. Granted, we did run into some very weird problems, but considering we only had an engineering mainboard & engineering class CPU available to work with, I'm overall satisfied with the performance versus the dough you have to pay for this processor. Pricing wise, this product is okay, and looking at it from a performance for wattage point of view we noticed that Phenom is definitely using less power than the 65-nm Intel products, but not the 45nm Penryn Yorkfield processors though.

It just needs time, because AMD doesn't have the R&D budget that Intel has. Once the problems are gone, I'm sure Phenom will be a lot better (sorry if you think I'm being too optimistic, but I want to be)

[EvilBellyLint]

ouch, bad bad news...
makes you wonder wtf went wrong. Too caught up with trying to make a true native quadcore perhaps?

Intel dropping prices further now = nail in the coffin.

Intel will not drop prices due to this. They have shareholders to
think of, and it's not like Intel is chasing AMD in market-share...


EBL

[Zytek_Fan]

Intel will not drop prices due to this. They have shareholders to
think of, and it's not like Intel is chasing AMD in market-share...


EBL

If anything, they're gonna start raising prices. Nothing too drastic, just what ever is enough for them.

[EvilBellyLint]

If anything, they're gonna start raising prices. Nothing too drastic, just what ever is enough for them.

Precisely. They may not actually raise prices, they'll just lower or outright
eliminate existing reseller incentives, bulk quantity discounts, & rebates.
End result is the same. Far fewer weekly specials on Newegg & ClubIT, et al.


EBL

[happychappy]

Hilbert @ Guru3D summed it up greatly


It just needs time, because AMD doesn't have the R&D budget that Intel has. Once the problems are gone, I'm sure Phenom will be a lot better (sorry if you think I'm being too optimistic, but I want to be)

Optimism is the only thing AMD can count on these days

[awdrifter]

All these issues with the L3 cache, I wonder how much of a performance hit will be if AMD removed/disabled the L3 completely. Even if it's 10%, higher clocks and better yields should make it a worthwhile trade off. (I'm assuming L3 isn't critical for the K10 to function here)

[freeloader]

All these issues with the L3 cache, I wonder how much of a performance hit will be if AMD removed/disabled the L3 completely. Even if it's 10%, higher clocks and better yields should make it a worthwhile trade off. (I'm assuming L3 isn't critical for the K10 to function here)

Drop the L3 and add more L2....2mb per core.

[knightwolf654]

i believe the l3 is used to communicate to each core.

[EnJoY]

what happens to people that have already purchased them

ENJOY

[dinos22]

Rofl

[Speederlander]

what happens to people that have already purchased them

Sucks to be them?

[JumpingJack]

Sucks to be them?

Well, they will likely issue the microcode fix, or they will offer to replace them... AMD is actually done a good job of correcting this in the past... recall the 3000 Opterons with the test escape, they were swapped out no questions asked.

[Dimitriman]

I always thought the L3 was a retarded idea to counter the shared cache used in Core arquit.

If they couldn't match the tech, just add more L2, but no, yields yields yields. guess they ain't so good now are they...

[JumpingJack]

And the plot thickens.....

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

B3 not until Mid Q1 to Late Q1 2008 ... translation, early Q2

"Saucier confirmed to us that the test systems at the Tahoe press event did not have the workaround enabled. "

So that is clear.... what we saw is what we get. There was no baked in 10% performance hit because of some BIOS tweak.

@ Informal -- we both errantly thought Errata 254 was the bug... but it is not, if you read the link above, it is designated as Errata 298, which does not appear in AMD's errata publication.

This was bad news all around.

EDIT: Ohhh, goodness... it get's worse.... it is not clear if the data we observed two weeks ago is sane...

We tested at a 2.3GHz core clock with a 2.0GHz north bridge clock, because AMD told us those speeds were representative of the Phenom 9600. Our production samples of the Phenom 9500 and 9600, however, have north bridge clocks of 1.8GHz. We've already confirmed lower scores in some benchmarks.

Given everything we've learned in the past few days, our review clearly overstates Phenom 9600 performance, as do (more likely than not) other reviews of the product. We can't know entirely by how much, though, until we can test a Phenom system with the TLB erratum workaround applied.

The NB were not clocked to the models of interest, so the 2.3 and 2.2 GHz at stock are likely not representative of the retail chip.

[Donnie27]

Precisely. They may not actually raise prices, they'll just lower or outright
eliminate existing reseller incentives, bulk quantity discounts, & rebates.
End result is the same. Far fewer weekly specials on Newegg & ClubIT, et al.

EBL

No way. Intel's Partners are already too use to Intel Price Points for about the last 18 months. Remember, Intel Profits are way up this last Quarter and not bad the Quarter before. They are expected to break a few records this Quarter. No, Intel's Stockholders aren't raising hell right now. Look for the real market watchers to issue Buy on Intel's stock.

Rant
It took Intel almost 3 years to build up the *Goodwill they currently enjoy. Intel has a WIDE range of products, not a Few like X2 represented when it held the performance crown. The only real way Intel could get away with jacking up prices is if AMD fell flat on its face and shipped nothing. IMHO, that ain't happenin'. Sure they'll suck for a couple of Quarters. Wayyyyyy too many folks have too much to loose to see AMD go down the drain like that though.

This truly and honestly saddens me to see this once Perky Punch-em-in-the-eye company sagging and struggling like this Anyone hoping to see harm come to AMD is just clueless and lame! We need a healthy AMD and without them, Intel CAN'T build enough processors to fill all orders. Demand then goes through the roof and we're screwed since this market will hurt more than others, too small, sheesh!

Someone, anyone at AMD should gotten Dirk and the Gain to run a parallel Line of what AMD fans called; "Makeshift, Glued, Stitched, A Hacked Hack, Jerry Rigged, rushed and thrown together, Not Native, Slower Than Native and etc.. model just like Intel Did. MCM don't look so bad now uh? Though I feel real bad for AMD, I can't say the same about their Fans.

[Donnie27]

And the plot thickens.....

http://www.techreport.com/discussions.x/13724

B3 not until Mid Q1 to Late Q1 2008 ... translation, early Q2



So that is clear.... what we saw is what we get. There was no baked in 10% performance hit because of some BIOS tweak.

@ Informal -- we both errantly thought Errata 254 was the bug... but it is not, if you read the link above, it is designated as Errata 298, which does not appear in AMD's errata publication.

This was bad news all around.

EDIT: Ohhh, goodness... it get's worse.... it is not clear if the data we observed two weeks ago is sane...



The NB were not clocked to the models of interest, so the 2.3 and 2.2 GHz at stock are likely not representative of the retail chip.

The Cores and the HT-Bus is not running 1:1 as some love to point out.

We don't yet have a BIOS with the workaround to test, but we've already discovered that our Phenom review overstates the performance of the 2.3GHz Phenom. We tested at a 2.3GHz core clock with a 2.0GHz north bridge clock, because AMD told us those speeds were representative of the Phenom 9600. Our production samples of the Phenom 9500 and 9600, however, have north bridge clocks of 1.8GHz. We've already confirmed lower scores in some benchmarks.

Others already complained about this being stuck at 1.8 or 2GHz and not budging, what gives here?

[JumpingJack]

The Cores and the HT-Bus is not running 1:1 as some love to point out.



Others already complained about this being stuck at 1.8 or 2GHz and not budging, what gives here?

Yeah, this is beyond worrisome -- AMD has not been executing for almost 2 years now (closer to 1.5 yrs, the AM2 launch was well done).

But they need to take a deep breath and deliver in volume and with quality, otherwise people are just going to get fed up.... the Dell rumor of de-emphasizing AMD gains some credibility now, Dell is all about supply, supply, supply ... they cannot deal with these kind of issues, and neither can any other large OEM.

[kuhla]

I can't help but shake my head every single time I see another thread about AMD. I realize the things-looking-bad-for-AMD threads are somewhat trendy right now but even if only half the information lately is true then its still really bad news for AMD. I like Intel but I don't want AMD to be so crippled they can't really recover for a long time since we all know constant competition is good for us: the customer.

[JumpingJack]

I can't help but shake my head every single time I see another thread about AMD. I realize the things-looking-bad-for-AMD threads are somewhat trendy right now but even if only half the information lately is true then its still really bad news for AMD. I like Intel but I don't want AMD to be so crippled they can't really recover for a long time since we all know constant competition is good for us: the customer.

They are really struggling and it is getting disconcerting ... regardless of who you prefer in your box, this is nothing by bad bad news.

AMD needs to pull it together, it would be horrid if this continues much longer. 2008 will likely be a better year for them overall, but they are still heading to a FY loss for 2008 is my guess.

[EvilBellyLint]

No way. Intel's Partners are already too use to Intel Price Points for about the last 18 months. Remember, Intel Profits are way up this last Quarter and not bad the Quarter before. They are expected to break a few records this Quarter. No, Intel's Stockholders aren't raising hell right now. Look for the real market watchers to issue Buy on Intel's stock.

Rant
It took Intel almost 3 years to build up the *Goodwill they currently enjoy. Intel has a WIDE range of products, not a Few like X2 represented when it held the performance crown. The only real way Intel could get away with jacking up prices is if AMD fell flat on its face and shipped nothing. IMHO, that ain't happenin'. Sure they'll suck for a couple of Quarters. Wayyyyyy too many folks have too much to loose to see AMD go down the drain like that though.

This truly and honestly saddens me to see this once Perky Punch-em-in-the-eye company sagging and struggling like this Anyone hoping to see harm come to AMD is just clueless and lame! We need a healthy AMD and without them, Intel CAN'T build enough processors to fill all orders. Demand then goes through the roof and we're screwed since this market will hurt more than others, too small, sheesh!

Someone, anyone at AMD should gotten Dirk and the Gain to run a parallel Line of what AMD fans called; "Makeshift, Glued, Stitched, A Hacked Hack, Jerry Rigged, rushed and thrown together, Not Native, Slower Than Native and etc.. model just like Intel Did. MCM don't look so bad now uh? Though I feel real bad for AMD, I can't say the same about their Fans.

uhh... that's pretty much what I stated. Intel will NOT drop prices as a
result of this news... nor will they raise them. They don't need to, and
neither approach would serve their interests.